


lately i've been craving more

by childrenbehave



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Canon, F/F, F/M, Girl Direction, Rule 63, girl!Liam - Freeform, girl!Niall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-05
Updated: 2013-03-05
Packaged: 2017-12-04 08:59:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/708949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/childrenbehave/pseuds/childrenbehave
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the breakup Liam is fine. Totally, perfectly fine. Except. Maybe she’s a little heartbroken, too, but it’s fine. Really. She just needs to get over it, but not without a little or a lot of help from her band. </p>
<p>[Girl Direction: girl!Liam, girl!Niall + Slightly AU'd events.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	lately i've been craving more

**Author's Note:**

> Long game Louis/Liam but at some point Niall/Liam happened, too. Yeah, it snuck up on us. So did the length. How. How does this keep happening to us? The break up timeline has also _definitely_ been fudged, a lot. AU tho! We blame this on how the fic grew from the middle out and by the time we realised the time frame we'd given it it was 3/4 done. Place it around right before the American leg of the tour more or less? Anyway. AU! Rules go out the window! Most of the them, we still stick to gravity and all other junk.
> 
> It's like a canon compliant and canon divergent AU rolled together.

He gets the message from Zayn at five in the afternoon and all he can think _he waited until five to tell us, wanker_ and turns back from where he was heading into Tesco’s, trying to figure out the fastest way to Liam’s because he knows Liam and Liam would have hidden herself away for a whole bloody day when it happened letting herself over think everything over a million times before she finally would call Zayn. And because he also knows Zayn, he knows that Zayn would have been there first thing in the morning because there's sleep and then there’s sad _Liam_. Sleep really had no chance. 

So Zayn’s been there since the morning and it’s _five_. 

And as much as Louis wants to yell at Dan because how fucking dare he - yes, he’s being unfair, and yes, he doesn’t care right now - break Liam’s heart, he knows Liam wouldn’t want him to. Because Liam is quite possibly the loveliest person in the world and he can just imagine her trying to curl into herself like she used to do and that just won’t do. 

At all.

He scrolls and lands on Harry’s number and calls. Harry was clearly expecting a call from _someone_ since he picks up on the first ring, rare, for their Hazza.

‘Lou?’

‘Pack your bags, Harold, we’re kipping at Liam’s for the week.’

He can already hear Harry’s fumbling as he moves around wherever he is, ‘Right, right, see you there.’ They hang up and Louis calls Niall, already heading toward Liam’s, not even thinking of stopping at his. Not when Liam needs them. Zayn wouldn’t have messaged otherwise.

*

She should have known Zayn couldn’t keep his mouth shut, Liam thinks fondly, as she hears her door slam open and three distinct voices call out. Sighing, she blinks herself awake. She hadn't been asleep, mostly just dozing against Zayn’s thigh and she really should have known when she felt him texting in the middle of Toy Story 2. Maybe she had. Maybe that was why she hadn't said anything. 

‘I hate you,’ she mutters, poking Zayn and rubbing at her eyes. She hasn’t cried since before Zayn got here this morning, but her eyes still feel raw. She hates crying. She used to cry in the bathroom in school and into her pillow back at home too often. But maybe she cried a little into Zayn’s dark jeans when the Jessie’s flashback happened in Toy Story 2, but she always cries during that, that’s all. 

Her eyes might be _a little_ red. 

Zayn huffs, dropping a hand to her hair, ‘You don’t,’ then he yells, ‘In the bedroom!’

And Liam closes her eyes, trying not to smile at the sounds of pounding footsteps and voices tripping over each other as they burst into her bedroom and crash on her bed. Her band doesn't do soft and quiet often, but she knows they can do it well. As she feels her bed bounce under three added bodies she's glad that right now they're choosing not to be quiet. She’s glad they’re being loud and overwhelming instead of tiptoeing around her as if she's made of glass and they have to be _careful_. 

She's fine. 

Really. 

People break up all the time. People write songs about it.

Liam is so very grateful that just then her face gets shoved against a red-white-and blue chest - oh, Niall's wearing her American flag vest top today - because it does a good job at muffling the sound too close to a sob that wanted to escape Liam’s throat. Against Niall's chest it sort of turns into a sob-gasp- _oof_. A much better sound all around.

Pushing at Niall’s ribs, Liam tries to smile as Niall's face crowds her sight. Niall's lips flicker like she sees something in Liam's face that makes her want to cry and she shoves Liam's face against her chest again. 

'Babe! I can't believe- do you want me to go beat him up? Because I can and will! Fighting Irish just for you!' 

Liam chokes out something that's too wet to be a laugh against the cotton of Niall's shirt. She curls her fingers into Niall’s shirt.

'Nialler, let her breathe,' Liam hears and feels two arms wrap around her and Niall as a chin hooks over her shoulder and a smooth cheek brushes against her that smells a little like smoke. Harry. Niall makes a sound that Liam assumes accompanies whatever face she's giving Harry but pushes off Liam to settle at her side, freckled arms around Liam’s hips. Harry octopuses himself around Liam from her other side, pressing her face against his neck. She can feel Zayn at her back by the headboard. There’s another weight by her legs. Liam presses herself deeper into Harry’s neck.

'I'm so sorry, Li,' he whispers against her hair. Everyone makes fun of Harry's slow drawl and how he takes forever to get a story out, but they've never had him cuddle them and be so bloody lovely giving so many layers of meaning into four words. He’s felt the sting of breakups most of all. Liam can feel even the smallest cracks she’s been ignoring shiver. 

Sniffling is not crying though. She rubs at her nose.

'Thanks, Haz,' she says, biting her lip. She lifts her head up from his neck and looks for Lou because she knows he's here, but he's quiet and that means, well. A quiet Louis can mean a lot of things. And thing is Louis and Zayn's protective streaks are ten miles thick and thirty floors tall. She almost called him first this morning, except. 

Louis is too good at ripping her walls down. Zayn at least lets her pretend she can still keep them up for bit. 

He's sitting at the foot of the bed and he's got a hand wrapped around her ankle looking at her like he can see every thought in her head. 'Hey, love.'

'Hey.' 

He shifts closer, grabbing one of her hands and threading their fingers together. Liam clutches at him when Louis squeezes at her hand. 

'So, we'll be moving in for a spell,' he says. 

And, god, her bandmates need to stop being so _themselves_ because Liam really doesn't want to cry anymore and here they are being just- well, they just need to stop, don't they?

She shakes her head, 'You know you can't.' 

Louis scoffs and can hear Harry _harrumph_ , Niall’s snort, and she knows behind her Zayn is rolling his eyes. 

'We know no such thing! Do we?' Louis looks around over Liam's head at the rest of their band and Liam can't even pretend to be surprised when they agree with him. To be honest she's glad. Now that they're here she doesn't want them to go. She doesn't want to look at the empty places Dan left behind. All of yesterday and this morning before Zayn came over even her bed had felt too big, the sheets still slightly smelling of Dan's aftershave before she stripped them, but now as she looks around it there's barely space left. Her band crowds it and around her.

Already Louis is explaining how they'll live on Liam's bed and send Harry and Niall out for provisions and play DDR for exercise and then Zayn's throwing out that Perrie will need a visiting pass, Harry says the same for Nick, and Niall mentions Demi. Liam thinks about the people she’d want a pass for but save her family they’re all here, now. 

God, she’s so soppy sometimes. 

Liam swallows the lump in her throat, her mouth feeling too dry as she speaks, 'I love you all, a lot.' 

Even with all their talking (so loud, so bright) they pause at Liam's words as quiet as they were and four faces snap to her, all their eyes telling her different things, filled with different worries, but all reflecting her words back. And then of course they pounce on her, covering her face with kisses and tickling her sides. She bats at them, half heartedly, but it's four for against one and this is the closest to _really_ laughing she’s been since Dan told her he just couldn't do it any more. 

Finally they let up and she has to rub at her eyes again. Somehow she's settled between Zayn and Louis as Niall jumps from the bed.

'Ugh, Zayn! Liam! Toy Story 3? This is not what we need right now!'

'Hey! I like it!' Liam defends because really, it's no Toy Story but still a perfectly fine film even if the fire pit scene should come with a content warning, did Pixar want to murder her soul?

Niall throws Liam a look. 'Li, babe, I love you, but no. You need,' she trails off and Liam and Harry sit up to watch her go through the stack of Disney DVDs on the floor, 'Aha!' Harry and Liam exchange a look _Aha?_ and giggle. Well, Harry giggles, Liam forces her lips up. Niall gives them another look even though they didn't say anything and sticks out her tongue. She crawls over back to the bed, shoving at Harry, and changes the DVD in Liam's laptop rearranging it on the bed. 'What you need is Mulan!'

'Mulan?' Liam echoes.

Niall nods slowly, very slowly indeed, 'Yes, because fuck if Fa Mulan needs a guy. She's going to save China! Boys suck!' She cringes at the round of protests that come from the rest of their bandmates, 'Fine! Boys suck, present company... INCLUDED!' She laughs, Liam mostly chokes on her laughter, because _Niall_ , but they high five each other to three unimpressed stares. Niall grins, unbothered, because really their bandmates are the cuddliest lads ever, and squeezes herself between Liam and Zayn. 'JK, lads! We still love you.'

The opening credits start and Liam shifts to get comfortable, resting her head against Louis’s shoulder. Niall’s warm at her side, her arm draped just under Liam’s chest, she can feel Zayn’s arm by her head, fingers threading through her hair, a leg thrown over her and Niall’s, and Harry’s hand is warm on her tummy. 

They all sing along to all of the songs and Liam’s not sure when she falls asleep. She’s so tired and her band are too warm around her, but she wouldn’t want to be anywhere else or with anyone else. 

*

Liam wakes up to Niall rolling over and slapping her in the boobs and then groans when she can feel Harry shove at Louis which means Louis gets shoved into her. Louis has pointy elbows. Liam opens her eyes and has to smile. Harry’s shoving hasn’t quite woken up Louis, whose face is sleepy but frowning in discomfort and so close to hers. Looking at her band, Liam smiles as she remembers having to wake up when they were all getting under the duvet, flashes of Harry shucking his kit off. Not that she could blame him, the five of them in one bed was nothing new but always overwarm, and shifting her legs she giggles as Niall’s prickly bare legs brush hers. Neither have shaved, oh well. If her hands were shaking the morning Dan left and she got in the shower by habit then that’s irrelevant, because everything’s easier after some sit ups and a shower, so _even this_ must be.

She moves Niall’s hand to where it’s almost threatening to grope Liam and tries to wiggle herself free. The DVD menu of The Princess and The Frog is still playing. Niall and Harry became very adamant about positive reinforcement for Liam even though she was mostly asleep for all the films past Mulan, only catching bits and pieces of Aladdin ( _Jasmine was so clearly a feminist, Niall!_ ), Tarzan ( _Girl explorer!_ ), and Beauty and the Beast ( _I like Be Our Guest and shhhhh you’ll wake up Liam!_ ) Her bandmates are mad, really. 

Her grin is only a clear result of this. 

‘Feeling better then,’ Louis’s voice says except Louis is... oh. Louis is awake and smiling softly at Liam where they’re being squished together by three other bodies. 

‘Oh, hi,’ Liam mumbles, ducking down a bit because um, morning breath is an actual thing. ‘Morning.’

Louis snuggles down with her ruining her plan and nudging their foreheads together. ‘Morning.’

‘Did I wake you?’

‘Nah,’ he shakes his head against their shared pillow, ‘Harry’s got more limbs than sense to use them. I think I’m bruised.’

Liam snickers, ‘Niall smacked me in the boob.’

Louis laughs, craning his head to look at Niall who tucked into the tiny space between Liam’s back and Zayn’s chest. ‘Niallll, that saucy minx, getting to second base with barely a blink.’

Liam rolls her eyes, ‘Hey now, _almost_ getting to second base. What kind of girl do you think I am?’

They stare at each other for a beat, Liam trying to glare, Louis raising his eyebrows before they dissolve into muffled laughter, turning their faces into their shared pillow. Harry snuffles and lets out a snore. Niall mumbles something in leprechaun language. Zayn could sleep through an apocalypse, Liam actually worries about this sometimes. She licks her lips and sighs, rolling on to her back, feeling as Louis leans up on one elbow. He’s looking at Liam like he wants to ask all the questions that she’s sure have been running through all their heads since Zayn sent them the text but Louis only reaches up and pinches her nose. Liam sniffs. 

‘You were right tired,’ he says instead. ‘Slept right through Harry and Zayn singing the Genie song.’

Liam shrugs, ‘I didn’t sleep that well night before.’ _All the crying_ , hangs in the space between them.

Louis nods like he understands and to be fair he probably does. They’ve all had those nights. Louis thumb rubs the skin under her eyes. She scrunches her nose at him. 

Swallowing, she sighs, ‘I didn’t think- I mean, I knew stuff wasn’t perfect but like, I thought we could have-’ she presses the heel of her hands against her eyes. Louis is the worst, he doesn’t even have to try and she’s already getting weepy. She doesn’t fight him when he pulls her hands away and she blinks rapidly because she’s _not_ going to cry anymore. Nope. 

‘Liam.’ He’s looking at her like _his_ heart is breaking for her and she tries for her best ‘I’m fine’ smile but she’s sure it comes out wobbly when Louis shifts up so he’s mostly sitting and cups her face. ‘Oh, darling,’ he says and brushes their lips together softly like he’s done a million times before to all of them, because Louis speaks through physical affection and he’s taught them all to do the same. The barely there kiss means he’s sorry she’s hurting and he’s not going anywhere. Liam nods and curls against his side. 

‘I just thought-’ she starts, stops. Sighs.

‘I know, love,’ he pulls their foreheads back together. Liam closes her eyes and just listening to her bandmates breathing before taking a deep breath and opening her eyes. Louis is still looking at her. Waiting for her, she realises. The next move is all hers. 

Liam pushes herself up as best she can from between Niall and Louis and he follows her up. ‘I think I need a run.’ The second she says it she knows it’s true. She wants the burn of her muscles, the slap of the cool air, the way her head goes pleasantly blank when she hits her stride almost like it happens on stage. Like nothing can touch her. Like Dan didn’t leave her adrift in a storm she had thought they were going to get through together.

He chuckles, cocking one eyebrow. ‘Liam...’

She shakes her head, ‘No, I do. I- I don’t want to keep crying and it’s either run or cry and I’m done with the crying.’

‘It’s not bad, crying I mean. Harry cries all the time,’ he looks behind him where Harry is curled around Dan’s- what used to be Dan’s pillow and Liam is glad. She rather the pillow smell like Harry now. ‘Better out than in and all that. If you want we can wake him and all three of us will have a nice little cry together. I’ve been feeling a bit congested.’ He pats his chest.

Grinning, Liam gets what Louis is saying, and it’s not about the _not_ crying but the, ‘I know, it’s not that, not _just_ that. I just need to think of anything else right now and like when I run-’ she waves a hand around, ‘I just need a good run to clear out my head.’

Louis still looks sceptical. Liam pushes off the bed. ‘We both know I won’t be able to go back to sleep now and I don’t want to just wallow.’

‘Everyone needs a good wallow, Li,’ Louis slides out behind her and she know that. She does. She would just rather not right now. ‘You don’t have to pretend everything is fine right away, love.’ And he says it so softly, reaching out to grab her hands again and pull her towards him. How do people not see how Louis is the most careful of them all? Liam lets the hug happen because Louis does give the best hugs and part of her really wants to just let him cuddle her forever, but all she can think about now is how Dan is not going to come back. All his clothes are already gone, all his books, all of his dance films, and how his pillow will smell like Harry now and all the pitying looks she’ll get because she couldn’t make it work. She couldn’t-

Liam pulls away from Louis and sighs. ‘I need to get out of here, Lou. Just for a bit, just for bit.’ And she hates how her voice sounds all cracked like shattered glass, but apparently that makes something snap in Louis’s eyes. 

He licks his lips, ‘Fine, but I’m coming with you.’

This makes Liam almost smile, ‘Lou... You don’t... I mean, you’re not- you don’t-’

‘Are you implying that I might be out of shape, Payne?’ His brows wing up and Liam bites her lips. 

‘No, never. Please join me on my morning jog for the first time ever.’

Louis grins, somehow sharp and soft all at once, ‘Don’t mind if I do.’ He looks over his shoulder to their sleeping bandmates and then at Liam. ‘We still all got stuff in the guest room?’

‘Some in this room, too, check the drawers,’ Liam says. ‘I’m going to get changed, alright?’ 

Lou nods and shoos her away. ‘Five minutes, Payne! You and me, we’ll see who the Olympian really is!’

Liam rolls her eyes but can’t help but smile. 

*

It’s overcast. Thick grey clouds covering the sky. Good, she thinks, gloomily. There’s the feel of rain and the air is crisp when she inhales. They left her flat to the snores of the bandmates in her bed and Louis sticking notes on their foreheads. Her normal jogging route from her flat takes her up to the park and even though she teases Louis about his general lack of doing physical exercise Liam has seen him play ninety minutes of football, try and try and try to get up on a surfboard until he succeeds, and he’s got energy to spare but it’s still a pleasant surprise to know he can keep pace with her. 

He joked about racing each other but since they started he’s been surprisingly quiet at her side, his breath and stride syncing up with her. Liam is glad he decided to come along because normally she can lose herself in the slap of her feet on the ground but today it’s harder than normal. All her thoughts are too loud, all the ‘what ifs’ circling inside her mind, so it’s nice to have Louis next to her taking half of her attention. 

When they round the duck pond in the park Liam hits that moment, though, where the world is all white noise around her and she almost breathes out in relief. She speeds up a little. Louis does too.

She doesn’t know how long she keeps them running so when Louis touches her arm it’s a bit of start. Blinking, she looks at him. His cheeks are flushed like hers must be. He’s smirking a little and she feels herself flush even more.

‘Sorry.’

Louis waves her away, ‘The others are up,’ is all he says.

‘Oh.’

‘Harry has summoned us for breakfast.’

‘Ah,’ she smiles, feeling an inexplicable fondness for Louis who hates most forms of exercise but is running with her, for Harry who’s most probably tearing Liam’s kitchen apart to make her favourite breakfast, and for Niall and Zayn who are still at her flat just waiting for her to get back. 

Louis smiles back, ‘Let’s head back then.’

Liam nods and realises that Louis was already guiding them back and they’re just at the entrance to the park. Louis tugs at her hand and pinches her nose. Liam bats him away, making a face, keeping his fingers in her for a short beat. 

Out of a mutual silent decision they decide to walk back and that’s when Liam feel the burn of her muscles in a way she hardly ever does after her regular morning run and nudges Louis’s shoulder. ‘How long were we jogging for?’

Louis slips his arms around Liam’s waist, pulling her to side his, cool fingers just brushing under her hoodie. She can smell their sweat mingling; it familiar, though, comforting, a bit just like after a performance, except it’s light out. She likes it. ‘Almost an hour. I think I’m going to have to come up with a horribly embarrassing nickname about your stamina.’

‘Louis!’ she yelps, flushing, but it the most normal she’s felt since-

Sighing, she drops her head to his shoulder. It’s not fair how much it hurts. ‘I haven’t even unfollowed him on Twitter.’

Louis’s hand comes up and strokes the back of her neck just how she likes it, she can feel his nose against her cheek and then there the cool feel of his mouth at her cheek. ‘Don’t worry about any of that, love. We’ll handle it all. Just worry about how Harry is clucking in your kitchen because you’re out of eggs.’

‘I am?’

Louis grins, ‘Don’t worry, he’s probably sent Niall out for some already. It’ll be fine, we’ve got you.’

And it probably should worry her how easy it is to let Louis’s words guide her right now, but the only thing Liam’s learned is a surety over the last two years is that there’s nobody in the world she loves and trusts more than her band.

When they get back home Harry is _also_ mumbling about cookery, because oh yeah, a lot of it was-- ‘I am getting you a whole new set, Liam, this is a disgrace. You don’t even have a wok.’ They all crowd around her sofa and Liam is glad that Niall pulls out her West Wing boxset because that means that they’ll all be here for at least series four. That’s when Niall starts ranting and skipping around until they get to Santos: ‘you know they based him on Obama, right?’

**

He drops down to the sofa and gropes for his phone in his jeans pocket. Bloody skinny jeans, he grumbles, pulling the phone out and grins at the text he sees.

_Skype date?!!????_

_9pm yr time! I’ll be on!_

Zayn checks the time. It’s only seven, good. He hasn’t missed Perrie yet. He can hear the others talking about going out and until ten seconds ago he had been planning on dragging Liam out with them because Liam isn’t wallowing as much as she had been that first week where they all barely left her flat - though Zayn’s never seen anybody wallow by jogging every morning but Liam can be weird; it was weirder that Louis joined her each morning - and burned through most of the Niall’s West Wing boxset and all the Fast and Furious films. Vin Diesel is awesome, okay?

Still, they’ve been trying to keep Liam from letting herself get lost in all the ‘what ifs-what could have I dones’ that she lets take over her head. Because it’s not like Dan was bad guy, but Liam is pretty much the best person he knows and she can be so hard on herself. He hates that anyone has made her question how great she is and maybe he and the others have been trying to make sure she’s not doing of that questioning. Sometimes with alcohol.

His train of thought is broken when the others finish piling in and Niall drops her legs on his lap. He pats them as Harry folds himself and Liam into the other, smaller, sofa and Louis drapes himself across the chair.

‘So, tonight?’ Louis starts.

‘Can’t, chatting with Perrie. Sorry, mate,’ Zayn says. 

Louis throws an incredibly unsubtle look from Zayn to Liam, but Li doesn’t notice because Harry is trying to braid her hair. Niall snickers and digs her toes into Zayn’s ribs. They exchange a look, but they’re also a bit worried about Liam’s reaction. Getting her out now is easier than before but still, Liam is Liam. It’s not that she dislikes going out, she’s just better at not going out when they have a six am wake up time. 

‘I’m still in,’ Niall adds, followed by Harry, ‘Boo, Zayn, but yeah, I’m in.’

‘Li?’

*

The others are out at the club so it’s only Liam and Zayn in his room half-watching The Incredible Hulk; she’s got a thing for Edward Norton and they’re both appreciative of Liv Tyler so it’s a win-win even when Zayn starts grumbling about film continuity and _three Bruce Banners_. She was a little surprised when Zayn decided to stay in but he had a Skype date with Perrie, which Liam feels had she kinda crashed by staying behind, but she stayed in her room for at least half of it before she couldn’t stand it anymore - she think her band has made her touch starved if left alone too long; she’s pretty sure this all Louis’s fault - and found a Superhero marathon on HBO. Plus she’s friendly with Perrie. 

When she shuffled into Zayn’s she did her best to stay quiet until Leigh-Anne shoved her face in at one point telling Liam exactly what Liam should do now that she’s single - _Go out and shag the fittest bloke in all of America, Liam! Or girl. Or both!_ \- which Zayn promptly shut down like he and Harry hadn’t told Liam something similar three days ago. So it wasn’t like she was the only one crashing their Skype date.

Like she said, Liam really likes Perrie and Leigh-Anne. 

Perrie and Zayn had ended their date shortly after and now it’s just her and Zayn and their dinners. Zayn’s finishing the chips, texting someone, and on screen Edward Norton’s Bruce Banner is getting cock-blocked by his own heart rate. Liam however is thinking that she kinda feels like that. Not cock-blocked, but like life-blocked. Like she’s tired of everything, and well, to be honest, she hasn’t had sex in weeks, which isn’t really an issue, she’s perfectly fine with her hands, except she wants to do something. She feels she’s got her own sad Hulk inside her waiting for... something. To do something. Something different. She thinks about Leigh-Anne’s rebound shag comment and earlier when Harry was telling to own her sexuality, fuck what the paps would say, and go out clubbing with them.

She didn’t, but that was mostly because she was knackered, she’d gone out with them two nights ago, and sometimes she just needs a little quiet. Zayn staying behind too had been a secretly blessing as Zayn’s the best to be quiet with.

Except right now Liam feels like Bruce Banner with something trying to crawl out of her skin. Like she wants to stop being the Liam everyone expects her to be. 

She sighs. 

Zayn, of course, notices. 

‘Babe?’

Liam kneels up on the sofa and turns to Zayn, ‘I’m not boring.’

Zayn’s eyes snap up with the _most_ unimpressed look ever. It makes Liam giggle. She can actually read what his entire face is saying. _Not bloody this again._ She shoves at his shoulder. 

‘Noooo, I mean. I know I’m not boring,’ she amends, because yes, they’ve had this conversation before - it was practically a band meeting, her mates are the most embarrassing people in the actual world - and she does know it, but, ‘I just feel boring, right now. Like I want to do something.’

‘Good, because I’m too tired to have that conversation again. So, do something? Like what?’ Zayn puts his phone down even as it pings with his R2D2 message alert. Liam can’t help but smile and waves her hands in the air, because she doesn’t _know_. She just feels like there’s something-- _Something_ she could be doing that says: I’m fine! Stop looking at me like we’ve gotten to the bit in Lady and the Tramp where Lady is lost on the street!

‘Anything? I dunno, just-’

Zayn sits up and grabs at one of her hands and she didn’t even realise she was drumming her fingers on her knee like she’s had too much Red Bull. 

‘Want to find the others? They should still be at the club,’ he says, meeting Liam’s gaze. She can tell he’s trying to work out what she wants. If only she knew.

Liam considers the club and shakes her head. She actually loves dancing even though she’s barely got rhythm to speak of, but Dan always liked teaching-- _anyway_ she likes to dance. Never went to the clubs before because she always felt awkward not drinking and having people stare at her - yes, yes, irony, table for one - bad dancing; she only really dances when she’s by herself in her room or with her bandmates. However, right now, dancing is not what she wants. She’s comfortable and not really in the mood to deal with everything going to the club entails. 

She shakes her head, ‘No, not really.’

‘Then what, Li?’ And Zayn is so patient and waiting for her to tell him what she needs, but the entire problem is she’s not sure. 

Pushing herself off the sofa, she throws her arm up, half gesturing to the tv, ‘I wish I could do that!’

Zayn eyes the television, ‘Hulk out?’ he’s smirking, the bastard.

Liam laughs. ‘No, but like, change! Everyone is always saying expecting _this_ Liam. Responsible, darling, _predictable_ Liam! And lately it’s been all ‘oh, poor sad, Liam’ and I’m not.’ Zayn raises his eyebrow and she sighs, ‘Well, I am, but I’m better than I was. I don’t want be looked as if everything I do is _expected_. I want to change that! I want, oh, I dunno, change something! Get tattoos! Wear leather skirts! Not bother with bras!’

Now Zayn is laughing and Liam can’t even blame him because she knows she’s being a bit ridiculous, but she’s also serious. ‘Ah, well, we can do that.’

Liam blinks. She wasn’t expecting that. Zayn’s easy approval. She’s not blind after all and knows he can be overly protective of her; she kinda loves that about him. 

‘Really?’

Zayn smiles, ‘Course, babe. Whatever you want. You really want a tattoo? We can get one right now.’

Liam bites her lips, because she’s not opposed to tattoos as a thing, and some of the ones the boys have are pretty nice. Some of them. ‘Maybe? I’m not sure what I’d get.’

‘Neither does Harry half the time.’ They both look at each other and dissolve into giggles. Zayn then reaches out and pulls her back to the sofa. ‘You know, it doesn’t have to be a tattoo. It can be anything you want.’

Liam nod, ‘Yeah, and maybe? To the tattoo, but maybe not tonight.’

‘But you still want to do something tonight?’

Liam nods again. 

‘You’d look great with a cartilage piercing,’ Zayn says, poking at her ears. Liam bats him away. ‘We could get matching ones.’ He waggles his eyebrows and Liam grins. She really does loves Zayn. She pulls him into a tight hug so grateful for him right now and then leans back about to say as much when his (ridiculous) blonde streak catches her eye. Liam practically leaps backwards again, feeling a sudden surge of adrenaline and sureness filling her. 

She knows what she wants to do. 

Zayn blinks slowly at her. ‘Li?’

‘Let’s cut my hair.’

Zayn’s eyes widen so much and she never thought they could get any bigger. 

‘Li.’ Never has her name sounded so much like _no_.

‘Yes!’

‘Liam, you know you can’t just cut your hair,’ he says and Liam can hear every single protest from everyone at management in her mind but she doesn’t care. It’s actually amazing how much she doesn’t care about what they’ll say because Liam always tries. Always tries so hard, and sometimes it’s not enough. Sometimes your boyfriend who you know _loved_ you tells you it’s not enough and--

‘No, yes, I can. I can because it’s my hair and nobody cares about it anyway. I can’t even wear it curly because that’s a Harry thing even though he’s a _bloke_ and could give less of a shit if we have similar hair in photo, and Niall is the blonde one so as long I don’t suddenly decide to go bleach-happy nobody will really care. Which also makes no sense since we all know Niall dyes her hair and she’s just as brunette as the rest of us.’

Liam knows she’s babbling, letting this spark take over her and drive her but she wants this. She wants to show everyone that they _don’t_ really know what Liam Payne will do; she’s not predictable, she’s _not_ boring, and she’s not wallowing. She wonders if _this_ is what Harry meant earlier. 

Zayn sighs, ‘It’s not that simple and you know it.’

The thing is Liam and Zayn get along so well they hardly ever fight. They see eye to eye on so many things. She remembers when Zayn showed Liam his first tattoo and she _knew_ it was going to get him in trouble but he did anyway, and they got lucky that people only seemed to embrace it in him (and Louis and even Harry to a point), and she’s gone while he’s gotten others - even when the designs are... questionable - so she knows he gets what it means to do something like this. But right now she wants to glare at him for trying to censor her for same reason he’s inked up his skin, hissing when the needle bites in too hard. He meets her glare and he’s not even looking at her like he’s angry just-- 

Oh.

They got lucky with the fans, that’s true, but they both remember the dressing down he and Harry got over their first tattoos. Wholesome image and all that jazz.

‘Zayn.’

‘I’m not saying you shouldn’t, but you have to be sure, because,’ he sighs. He looks at Liam and she knows. She nods.

‘I know and I’m sure.’

He drops his head back on the sofa and covers his eyes. ‘All right then, let’s do this.’ Liam leaps back onto the sofa and reaches over to kiss his cheeks. ‘Let me grab the scissors from Harry’s bag!’ 

‘Why does Harry have scissors and should we be worried!’ Zayn calls out.

Liam laughs, half out the door. ‘He was cutting the sleeves off his shirts! Niall was helping.’

‘So yes, then!’

*

When Liam gets back she and Zayn head to the bathroom and stare at the scissors for a long beat. 

‘You sure, love?’

Liam nods, ‘Yeah,’ she takes a deep breath. ‘ _Yeah_.’

‘Right, then,’ Zayn pats the toilet seat and grabs the extendable shower head, turning the water from the tub on. Liam looks at him as he does this and she thinks about Lou who’s pretty much taught them everything they need to know about hair care and how they’re both probably remembering _always have to cut curly hair when it’s wet, Liam, Harry, and properly washed, that goes for all of you! Now, Niall, with your dye..._

When the water is warm enough they both shuffle towards the tub and Liam kneels, flipping her head over and lets Zayn start. This is all reminding her of when she was little and her mum would do wash her hair. It’s nice. She holds the shower head so it doesn’t spray them and closes her eyes letting Zayn’s fingers run through her hair. He’s got nice fingers, she thinks absently, and tells him so. 

‘Perrie hasn’t complained yet,’ he says, grabbing the shower head to rinse the shampoo out.

Liam laughs. ‘Eww, things I did not need to know.’

‘Please, like I don’t know you and Niall don’t talk to her and the rest of Little Mix every other week. She probably tells you more.’ Liam can’t see his face but she’s pretty there was an eyeroll there. 

Upside down, Liam just shrugs. It’s not like he’s wrong. 

‘Okay, done,’ he says after a while and she can feel him turn off the tap and step back. He drops a towel over head and helps her up. 

She runs the towel over her hair and takes the brush Zayn hands her. Her hair isn’t as long as Niall’s, barely past her shoulders, just to her collar bones, but she hasn't had it short _short_ in ages. She brushes it and pulls it into a tight low ponytail just at the base of her neck. Sitting back on the closed toilet seat she swallows and looks up at Zayn.

They never really think about the age differences in the band, except for Harry sometimes, because he really _is_ so young, but she’s never really felt younger than Zayn. Not like she does right now. It’s very obvious he’s a big brother.

‘Ready,’ he asks again, grabbing the scissors. 

Liam glances at the mirror and stands. Zayn eyes her. She shrugs, ‘I want to see you do it.’

He nods and then goes stand behind her in front of the mirror. Liam nods and she feels Zayn’s fingers at the back of her neck. He hooks his chin over her shoulder and kisses her cheek. ‘If this goes horribly wrong you only have yourself to blame.’

Liam laughs, ‘Get on with it, Malik.’ Her nails are digging into her the fleshy bit of her palm and she forces herself to unclench her hands.

She can feel Zayn hold the wet rope that is her hair and hears the scissors as he works them through her hair and then.

The wet weight of her hair against her back is gone. She can feel the loose strands now flutter free and damp against her neck and cheeks where her hair is falling forward without the hair tie holding it back. In the mirror Zayn is holding up the dark wet leftover ponytail in his hand like a prize. He winks and all Liam can do is laugh like she hasn’t done in ages. 

It’s a shame she can’t blame her misty eyes on Toy Story 3 or The Lion King but Zayn is right there pulling into a tight hug and ruffling her much shorter hair. 

‘Well, look at you Liam Payne, proper supermodel, aren’t you?’

‘Shut it,’ she pokes his cheek, flushing. 

‘Let’s take a pic!’

She nods. ‘Um, not for twitter though, not yet.’ Zayn looks at her and nods slowly. ‘Just us, then, babe.’

*

‘You know we have to leave this room at some point. Maybe not for breakfast, but we do have to be on the bus in two hours.’

Liam glares at Zayn because _Zayn_ telling _her_ to get up early. Really?

She runs her fingers through her hair (again) and she’s still not used to it ending so quickly. She licks her lips and looks at herself in the mirror. It doesn’t look bad. Her curls aren’t the springiest things but they’re so much more _there_ than they normally are. She didn’t even bother to tame them as she’s been taught to so they’re not at Harry Levels of Similarity. She kinda doesn’t want to. Not yet. The cut might need a little styling, but until then Liam wants her hair to be as messy as it wants to be. 

Still. 

‘Li, you look great,’ he smirks, ‘I did a good job, I must say.’

That makes her roll her eyes, ‘Twat.’

He pulls on her arm, ‘Come on, let’s go, they won’t say anything bad.’

She really hates how well Zayn can read her. ‘I’m not worried about that,’ she mumbles. Zayn does not look like he believes her. Liam rolls her eyes. 

They make their way out of Zayn’s room and she eyes the _Do Not Disturb (You wankers! I mean it.)_ sign. It has an angry face on it. She flicks at it. ‘Creative.’

Zayn shrugs, ‘Well, you know.’

She smiles at him, ‘So, they won’t say anything bad, huh?’

Zayn flushes and Liam grins, knowing she’s caught him too. ‘Drunk and stupid is totally different.’ Liam bumps his shoulder and slips her arm around his waist. Zayn’s arm drapes over her shoulders. She can feel the warm of his skin by her bare neck. She takes a deep breath as they head towards Niall’s room where Louis messaged them that breakfast was happening. 

Zayn pushes the door open when the key card beeps and Liam does _not_ run back to Zayn’s room. Still, it’s a thought. 

Nobody notices anything for a good minute as Niall and Harry are fighting over pancakes and waffles and Louis is texting.

‘Finally, sleepy heads,’ Louis says from where he’s texting and he hasn’t looked up. Niall and Harry are using their forks are weapons. ‘We were about to _disturb_ you.’

‘Morning,’ Liam says, and she tries to keep her voice even, totally normal, totally casual, but Liam isn’t very good at hiding her feeling from her bandmates anymore and it comes out a little nervous and raw. It’s either the tone or the way neither she nor Zayn told them they’re disturbing enough on a daily basis. Enough that three heads snap to her and then there’s a lot of blinking. 

Like a lot. 

Like possibly maybe too much. 

Zayn sighs and rolls his eyes, then drops down onto the closest bed, stealing some of Louis’s toast. ‘Be less obvious, really.’

Niall snaps into action first, as if Zayn’s words have taken everyone from a pause. ‘LIAMMMMMMM. Oh my god,’ she jumps from her seat and jumps on Liam. Thank god Niall is so petite, Liam thinks as she manages to mostly catch her. She immediately starts petting Liam’s much shorter hair, ‘Oh my god, you look so good! Is this why you didn’t come out last night?’

Liam barely has time to tell Niall that it was a whim when Harry jumps in, coming over and combing his hand through her hair, pulling the strands out as far as they go. Harry, ironically or maybe not, has always been the most vocal fan of Liam’s curls. He actually pouted when Lou started making Liam’s hair less curly. (‘But I like when our hair matches.’) He presses a kiss to Liam’s cheek, tugging on one strand of curl, ‘It looks lovely, Li.’ 

Liam can’t help but smile at Harry’s gentleness. She leans over and kisses his cheek back, ‘Thank, Hazza.’

Liam turns to where Louis is still sitting. ‘So? What do you think, Lou? Will it be four ‘yes’s?’ 

Louis is always the final word. In the end they all turn to Louis, except those moments when Louis turns to her, but this isn’t one of those times. 

The seconds that it takes Louis to stand and walk over to Liam feel too long. She can feel and Niall and Harry slowly detach from her side, but before she can feel too self-conscious Louis’s hands are at her cheeks he’s smiling, all teeth and crinkly eyes. 

‘Must you keep trying to one up us in the looks department,’ he says, and he’s running his hands through her hair, less carefully than Zayn had, softer than Niall did, but with more purpose than Harry. She wants to tuck her forehead into his neck as he does it, because it feels nice, how his fingers are fluttering by her neck, so she does.

‘Definitely a yes,’ he says and tickles her side. She giggles and then grins when he turns them to their bandmates who are all grinning at them. 

Niall speaks up first. ‘So breakfast?’

Liam nods and they crowd around the small rollaway room service table as she and Zayn tell them the story of the hair cut. Everyone keeps mostly petting her. And then just as she’s taking a bite of toast Liam blanches. 

‘Liam?’ Louis asks just as Zayn say, ‘Babe?’

‘Lou is going to kill me.’

The other four look between each other and laugh, shaking their heads. Louis tucks her into his shoulder again. ‘Don’t worry, we have your back.’

‘And she might love it!’ Harry says, because Harry is an optimistic bastard. 

(Lou has to take a couple deep breaths and she gives Liam and Zayn a very long-winded speech about unsupervised haircuts but then she runs her fingers through Liam’s hair and smiles, ‘But we’ll make do just fine. Now, Liam, how do you feel about the words ‘cutest punk haircut in the world.’

Liam beams. ‘Very good.’

‘Excellent.’)

**

It doesn’t fix everything.

Liam was prepared for that.

Honestly, she was. 

And it’s better - it _really_ is - because the others have mostly stopped giving her those _looks._ The ones where they’re watching her like the Avengers watched Bruce Banner on the helicarrier, except like the helicarrier might turn on _Bruce._

The haircut gives interviewers (and management) something else to talk about, so Louis doesn’t have to actually tell her to relax when they ask who’s single and who’s taken like that’s something to joke over, but she’s glad he still presses his leg against hers from hip to knee, because something still lurches uncomfortably in her stomach when they ask. 

It’s dangerously close to being nice, having their attention like that, because Liam never knows how to ask for it - never wants to be a bother, usually tries to be the one looking out for them. It’s also just uncomfortable, sometimes, being the centre of things. 

There’s still bad days, though, when Dan leaving feels like a skinned knee when all she’s got is hurdles to run. Liam doesn’t want to feel pathetic about it. She doesn’t _want_ to find a way to relate every little thing ( _Little Things,_ damn it) back to Dan. 

The world could really help with that by not putting things like empty sugar packets in the bowl of full packets (Dan’s pet hate, Liam’s bad habit) or people in white shirts buttoned all the way up with fashionable flicky collars in the reception (she only stole two of them, okay?) or, God, _newspapers._ Why do they have to have those again?

Liam hears the call for the soundcheck with so, so much relief. 

Even bantering with Niall and butting shoulders with Louis is about a million times easier after she’s handed over her bag. It’s not that the others texting people makes her feel bad or anything - Niall is probably texting Demi and Louis will be sending funny faces one of his sisters, Liam thinks Fizz got a new phone for Christmas? She’s not got couple envy or anything horrible like that: they all deserve to be happy. It’s just. When Liam used to check her phone at the same time, the homepage would have at least one notification from Dan. 

On stage there’s not been anyone but them and the backing band for a very long time. It’s not changed at all. 

They go through I Want as a warm up, bantering back and forth and sticking their mics in each other’s faces like there’s no audience - not that it changes much when there _is_ an audience - and smoothing off the rough edges of their morning voices on the _I want, I want, I wants_ while Louis and Harry get a headstart on wrecking the set. Liam is going to be fine. 

Christ, she even makes it through _Little Things,_ not a blink, so wrapped up in grinning as Niall picks up the acoustic guitar and in the harmonies they trade off with each other. It’s become so much a thing about all five of them and how _good_ her mates are at what they get to do, such a thing with the audience, when they wave all those lights that put a lump in her throat, almost to the point where the actual lyrics have faded enough to barely make an impression. It’s probably not the kindest thought about a love song, but it’s more about the bleached days and tea trays in the studio than the little things about their other halves for Liam now, and it’s Louis writing for them, listening to them sing it with a smile that wasn’t for the cameras. 

Except. 

Except the afternoon can’t stop there, with them cross-legged in an empty hall singing around a stadium-lit campfire. 

Liam ignores the building thoughts, even when she _knows_ she’s getting tetchy. She catches herself wanting to tell Harry to take rehearsal seriously like it’s 2010 and manages to stop the sentence halfway, but Haz raises an eyebrow, catching the start of it. Maybe she just needs lunch. Hypo-gly-whatever it is Niall says when she’s wanting food and now, not that she ever actually goes the whole distance to cranky about it. (That’s why they carry cereal bars everywhere.)

Then they do Tell Me a Lie. 

And Liam just. 

She just.

Liam throws herself into the chorus but it’s not the right kind of energy, she can feel it bubbling in her throat and in the throbbing register that’s just high enough to be impressive. It’s not heartbroken, it’s not yearning: it’s _angry._ Liam feels hands catching her upper arms and trying to pull her in as she paces the stage while they sing about distance, because clearly, they were naive fools when they wrote this one. They had to have been. It feels so inadequate against the months and weeks she’s spent avoiding the news, avoiding lies, avoiding anything and cutting her hair and three steps forward and two steps back. It’s not enough to wish the truth away when there’s nothing but truth in your face. 

Maybe they’re getting used to the arenas at last - maybe that’s why the silence at the end of the song feels so odd, because it’s not applause. 

A water bottle smacks into Liam’s hand. ‘Love,’ Zayn says, nodding to it. 

‘What’s next?’ Liam asks over her shoulder, feeling the tension in her muscles, and when did that happen. 

Zayn nods at the floor, where the handwritten set list for the afternoon rehearsal is sitting by the mic stand. Because that’s the point: adjusting the equipment and levels to the new venue, not Liam’s impending breakdown, because she is a _professional_ and she will act like it. 

_they don’t know about us_

Something in her face must give her away. The bit of that song that came from Liam came from phone calls, worried looks, people saying ‘are you sure’ about the flat, and the moving-in-together-with-Dan. And Liam had been _so_ sure: about the flat, about Dan. 

Zayn clenches a hand on her shoulder. He stopped being tall enough to put an arm around her standing up when she started being put in boots with even a little heel, but she appreciates it. She just doesn’t know how she’s going to be their first verse on this one for a minute. 

‘You too, Zee,’ a voice is saying, slow and determined. ‘Lou, I mean it. Give me ten here.’

The hand on her shoulder squeezes again and she can hear Zayn’s voice saying, ‘Go easy.’

Harry scoffs, and it sounds an awful lot like ‘as if I’d do anything else.’

‘Li,’ Harry says, and Liam turns around to see him standing by the amp, digging through Liam’s hoodie pocket. 

Liam gulps down some more water - when did she get so thirsty? - and watches as Zayn tugs Louis’s sleeve to pull him off the stage as well. It takes two or three tries, Lou’s eyes dark and worried, but he nods to Harry and goes.

‘I was losing it, wasn’t I?’

Harry nods, stretching back up with a silver ipod and headphones in his hand. He sits on the couch that’s part of the set and pulls his legs up. ‘Just a bit. C’mere.’ Liam goes, and the couch is big enough for them both to be sit space between, but it’s habit by now really, and she presses herself to Harry’s side, the other half of the couch almost seems to be waiting for the other. Harry pats her knee and tugs one of her curls. ‘You’ll be begging me for a beanie the first time the static gets into this.’ 

He probably has a point, now the weight isn’t dragging her hair down into waves. She quirks a smile at Harry and lifts the one off his head. ‘You’ve got a spare in your satchel. How’d I look?’ 

Harry looks at both sides of her head - like they’re going to be different - and nods. ‘Good.’ Then he very deliberately tugs a curl free at the front. She probably looks like a cartoon animal with a quiff or something. ‘Gonna tell me why today sucks?’ 

Liam groans and leans back against the cushion to tangle her legs with Harry’s. She’s long ago come to terms with the fact that her bandmates are nosy and she’ll tell them eventually so she might as well fess up at the earliest opportunity to save time. ‘Sun article. Saw it in the reception this morning while the cars were coming round.’ 

‘But you know better,’ Harry says, and it’s not a telling off. It’s just a statement of fact. And he’s right, she _usually does,_ and she’ll drag any newspaper in English from Harry’s hands unless it’s the sports pages, and he only pretends to read those to annoy Louis, who’ll be wanting the footie news from home. 

‘Wasn’t about me,’ Liam replies, clasping her hands behind her head and letting her eyes fall shut with a sigh she’s been keeping back all morning. 

‘Oh, love,’ Harry says, and curls his knee into her side. The cool touch of metal at her tshirt hem catches her off guard and she yelps. Harry’s laugh is a rumble in his chest more than anything else. Her ipod balances on her stomach and moves up and down when she breathes. She’s a tiny bit proud of how easily it balances there on her abs. Okay, quite a bit proud. Liam, Perrie and Leigh-Anne had talked about how nice it was that the cut off tees had come back in from the cold of the 90s and they could show off their workouts. The cut off tee isn’t quite in line with her ‘image’ but she can dream, can’t she?

‘It’s just. Dan wanted out, you know? Too much attention, messing with his dancing, no one wants a back up dancer more famous than them, I was never home, all that,’ Liam says slowly, ‘and I can’t even blame him? And he’s still getting it, and there’s nothing I can do about it. And.’

There’s a beat when Harry’s hand on her hip tightens. It occurs to Liam that she’s never told any of them anything other than that Dan had left and it was no one’s fault and only that to make sure they knew _you don’t need to try to punch anyone_ even though they all know she's the only one with a decent right hook. 

She wonders if she shouldn’t have said anything: if it could happen to her, there’s a chance this amazing thing they call a job could cost people like Harry loved ones, too, not that she thinks anyone could actually _leave_ Harry, once they know him right.

‘Don’t hit me, but I’m Dan in me and Cazza,’ Harry says quietly and no, Liam didn’t know that, but she doesn’t want to hit Harry either. She knows how Harry takes his eggs and toast but didn’t know that. ‘Couldn’t think of anything else to do to stop it, I don’t know, messing with her whole life. You’re bloody decent, you know that? Worrying about him?’ 

Liam can’t think of anything to say to that other than _not decent enough, because I’m still not protection enough._ She doesn’t say it. 

Harry jumps up and offers her both hands to pull her forward. Her feet skim the floor. Louis or Niall’s would kick in the air, she thinks, and that’s okay, it’s okay to just measure herself against these four, because she doesn’t think they’ll find her lacking too much. 

‘Let’s see,’ Harry says, thumbing through the ipod touch. ‘It’ll be on the break up playlist you’ve been trying not to cry to.’ 

‘If this is supposed to be help- I don’t have a-’

Harry rolls his eyes but his voice is another one of those statements of fact. ‘Of course you do. Everyone makes a break up playlist and cries to it. I’d be more worried if you hadn’t.’ 

‘Fine.’ 

He pauses, eyebrow up through his hair. ‘Ugh, really?’ 

‘You just said-’

‘Yes, but mine is _better_ , honestly, I could hook you up with so much better misery music than most of this-’

Liam reaches forward and hugs the ipod to her chest. ‘That’s quite enough, thank you.’ 

Harry tugs his hem down and pushes his hand through his hair. He very carefully doesn’t laugh at her, for which she’s grateful. ‘Pick the one you’ve been playing on repeat the most,’ he says, and it sounds like an order. He waves a long arm at the absolutely empty arena. ‘Then you’re going to have your own silent disco karaoke moment.’ 

‘We shouldn’t waste-’

Harry starts to hum the chorus of They Don’t Know About Us and it goes through Liam’s stomach like a knife. He’s right, the bastard. He offers her the headphones and she puts the buds in with just a little mutter of protest. 

‘I feel like an idiot.’ 

‘Then shut your eyes.’ 

Liam does, tucking the ipod into her trackie pockets and shifting her feet. 

Harry puts his hands on her hips and pushes her into the middle of the stage. 

‘We wouldn’t be here, Liam, if we hadn’t made complete tits of ourselves dancing in our bedrooms with hairbrushes pretending we were singing to a whole arena,’ Harry says forcefully, waving his hand to the empty seats in a way that makes Liam think, _one day, Simba, all of this can be yours, everything the light touches._ ‘So make that fourteen year old with the wicked soprano really happy and sing your broken little heart out to the back row, then we’ll get back to work.’ 

Liam holds Harry’s eyes until he’s curled up on the couch again, watching her expectantly. 

The thing is, Harry’s right. Liam _was_ that kid, getting caught by her sisters, laughed at and dancing around her bedroom with whatever worked as a fake mic in her hand regardless. It was the only bright spot in some of her days after school. The only feeling she’s had worse than leaving the country while Dan left their flat was the first time she got to the judges’ house and didn’t get through. And she really did love picturing her bedroom wall as an arena full of people. 

The thought gives her enough courage to pull the ipod out: if Dan leaving is only the second worst thing, singing must still be the very best thing. 

She slips the ipod from her pocket and scrolls to find the song that’s been her go-to for the past fortnight. It’s a girl-and-piano cover of a cool hipster band, Harry’s going to hate it, but he can deal with it, since this is all his bright idea in the first place. 

Liam’s voice sounds thin, like it doesn’t carry, which she supposes it doesn’t without a mic. It feels like she’s actually a fourteen year old shouting into a too-big hall. 

The rhythm picks up, though, and starts to worm its way into her voice. 

She wishes she were playing the piano, even though she doesn’t know the part to this one, because she doesn’t know what to do with her hands. And the bits where her voice deviates from the singer on the track are jarring, because she’s not used to anyone’s voice with hers that isn’t one of the band’s. It’s stopping her hearing herself clearly and adjusting to get the best vocal line out of the song, which never happens with the band. 

Liam rather suspects Harry wouldn’t take that as an objection. 

But then it has a line about following someone into the rabbit hole, except _you didn’t want me to_ , and she remembers why she couldn’t listen to this one for a whole week after shuffle threw it at her, and then she couldn’t _stop_. It _takes an ocean not to break_ rips something out of her throat, she flubs a line or two, chokes on the third, has never messed up on stage so many times in one song in three years, but comes out swinging on the next line, and her voice doesn’t feel so thin anymore. It feels like punching back; right hook, upper jab. 

*

Even though Liam folds into the harmonies neatly, is their steady anchor on the first verse and all that, sometimes Harry just wants to watch her let go. Not as in sex, but really, there's a lot to be said for the similarity. He watches her eyes flutter shut and her hand turn the volume of the (horrible, derivative, uninspired) Birdy cover of The National up, up, up until Harry can hear it leaking out of the earphones. Hearing her voice throb and arc above the ipod’s tinny effects into the empty arena without a care about blended sound levels, he remembers - really remembers - how fucking amazing that voice is. 

He’s so lost in listening to Liam that he almost misses when she switches song. To be fair, he’s not sure she knows she’s doing it. It’s like her playlist just continued on and Liam forgot to stop singing. 

It’s an Ed song.

Harry knows it well, it’s on his own break up playlist, and as Liam’s voice starts in on the first bridge he realises she doesn’t ‘fix’ the lyrics and the song changes so completely for Harry. It’s like she’s singing to herself _about_ herself and his heart aches. He rubs at his eyes and doesn’t look back towards where the others are doing a horrible job of staying away like he asked but he never really expected them to stray too far anyway.

She hits the harmonies and Harry almost has the urge of pulling out his phone, making a video and sending it to Ed with _U + LIAM, DUET, NOW._ He doesn’t though, this is a moment for Liam, and well, them and she’s losing herself in the music in a way Harry understands so thoroughly that he can’t help but be pulled in a little and want to get lost with her. Even for just a little bit. 

Harry’s never been one to question his actions, not when they feel like they matter so much, and he slides off from his perch on the couch arm where he’s watching the line of Liam’s back while she sings and slips behind her. 

He’s a horrible dancer, horrible, he’s accepted that about himself, but he can pull off a slow almost waltz. Liam starts and blink and drops a lyric like she just realises she just _kept going_ and Harry’s going to stop her or pull her back. But well, he isn’t. Quite the opposite. 

He picks up the lyric she dropped, he knows the song by heart and the look Liam gives him is worth all the teasing he’ll get about his dancing later. Her voice blends back in and she giggles when he spins her around the stage but she doesn’t drop a note again, only detaching her hand from his to slip an earbud into his ear so they’re tethered together by the headphones.

At one point he catches sight of the band, just at the edges of the stage, smiling at them and Harry pulls Liam closer. They extend the hook for about three times longer than Ed ever planned, grinning and giggling more than singing towards the end, but he’s pretty sure Ed won’t mind.

**

They hadn’t actually known how many shows they were going to do when they left. 

Then they got the itinerary and it’s still full. So many cities. And the venues kept getting bigger. It sinks in slowly that they’re still not going home. Very slowly. It wears them all down a bit, even while they’re hissing _six, eight, ten thousand, oh my god, will they all show up?_ at the venue capacities. 

Sometimes Liam doesn’t know what she’s homesick _for_ the way the others seem to: her sisters, yes, her mam and dad, God yes, but that’s entirely different to the weight in her chest some days making the sit ups burn. What if it’s something Dan packed up in boxes and took with him while she packed a suitcase? What if she’s aching for something that won’t be there when she gets back?

Somewhere in the middle of rehearsals for the Olympics, Niall tells Liam they’re having a girls’ day to celebrate their second anniversary. Liam grins: she hadn’t forgotten, but it’s nice to know someone else has a cluster of dates marked in the calendar for this time of year, one for each time any of them met one of the others, one for being put together as a five. On that particular Wednesday, Liam’s got a note reminding her that she met Niall by lending her straighteners at the first audition today two years ago. They’d had numbers across their chests, the notion of being a band hadn’t even been a twinkle in Simon’s eye. A panel of producers had cleared them to go on to the real auditions and Niall’s straighteners had promptly blown up in a puff of smoke and Irish-accented curses. 

‘So you know how you get a lump of coal for your tenth wedding anniversary and shit,’ Niall says, stealing the remote and lying down next to her on her front on the bed, side pressed against her from ankle to shoulder. 

Liam steals the remote back. Every time she turns on a one of their TV, it goes straight to reruns of One Tree Hill. Bloody Louis. She finds the radio channels and shoves on Kerrang!, which makes Niall kick her feet happily in time to the screamo. ‘I think so, yeah?’ She’s pretty sure it doesn’t work quite like that, though. Niall’s vest top is tugged down by the motion a bit and she’s not wearing a bra, and well, Liam has eyes. Appreciative ones. 

She looks away quickly. 

Niall has never had a thought that didn’t trip out of her mouth five seconds later, so when she sits up cross-legged and adjusts her top with, ‘Admiring my tits, yeah?’ it’s not exactly a surprise. 

Liam two years ago would have blushed and run for the hills. Or from the living room. Too many years of averting her eyes in the changing rooms under the guise of politeness, but really, not wanting to give them something else to say to her under their breath on the stairs. 

Instead she raises an eyebrow and says, ‘Well, they’re very nice. Worth a compliment or two. You were saying about the anniversary?’ 

Niall preens and smiles, reaching for a box she’d sat by the bed on the way in. It’s bright pink and stripy. She opens it with a flourish and a frankly lustful look inside. Liam laughs. 

‘I’ve decided feck that, who wants to get a shitty different kind of present every year? What if you like it and you can’t have it again? You and me, babe, we’re gonna have cupcakes every year.’ 

Liam looks into the box and has to admire the icing work. There’s some serious sculptures on those things, like Zayn’s hair level sculptures. 

‘I didn’t get you anything.’ 

She’d meant to, honest. But then they’d had interviews and press and shows and eventually, some sleeping, and then she’d seen the alert on her phone and thought, _already?_

‘That’s why I got six,’ Niall says, pointing to the box, where they’re still hovering over the cupcakes and looking down like the cakes are animals in a zoo pit or something. Niall grins. ‘Technically we get three each, but if you feel _bad enough_ about not getting me anything, you can always give me an extra one of yours or a half of one - like that mint and chocolate one on the left, say - and you still get to have two, and nobody feels bad.’ 

It’s such pure Niall logic that Liam laughs a bit helplessly. 

Niall bounces on her heels, shifting on the bed. ‘So can we eat them? I mean I took pictures already, if it’s spoiling the art you’re worried about.’ Her tone suggests she has other priorities and would like Liam to re-examine hers. 

Her hair is shoved through the back of a baseball cap and spills down between her shoulder blades, visible beneath the thin straps of the white vest top. 

Liam reaches into the box at the same time, back of her hand brushing Niall’s, and they lift out a cupcake each. ‘These are awesome, Ni.’ 

‘Well, we’re toasting, right?’ Niall answers, lifting the cupcake up to clink it. The tiny icing champagne glass on top is knocked askew and they both giggle. 

Liam takes her mini champagne glass off the top of her cake and pops it in her mouth. ‘Edible.’

Niall gives her a look that’s chock full of every dirty joke that she could possibly say to that, and there’s so many possibilities she looks uncomfortable with the responsibility of choosing just one. 

Liam takes a bite of the cake itself after peeling the case down and practically groans. ‘How do you find these places? It’s like you have spidey sense but for, like, the best bakery in any city anywhere.’

Niall takes a bite of hers and nods, ‘Twitter. They know what we need to know.’ 

‘Seriously thinking about not giving you my extra one, they’re so good,’ Liam says, taking another bite and keeping her face straight.

Niall scrunches her nose up at her and reaches a finger into the cupcake case to pick up a piece of discarded icing. She looks torn, then smears it on Liam’s cheek with a thumb. 

‘Oh you _didn’t_ ,’ Liam says in a low voice. ‘Don’t you dare -’

Niall sits back on her heels, grinning like the demon cupid she is and projecting ‘what are you gonna do about it’ with every angle of her shoulders and a hand on her hip. 

The thing that always pisses off the boys is that whenever there’s a giant food fight, someone always wants to give Louis a speech about it. Like he started it. And he starts most things, but the food fights have almost always been Liam, if she’s _entirely_ honest, and she usually is, because Louis gets enough speeches. 

Liam moves the untouched cakes carefully onto the bedside table and pounces while Niall shrieks, and somehow trying to get red velvet icing onto Niall’s face turns into tickling her ribs and wondering how many bruises she’ll have from Niall’s feet kicking her shoulder. Liam flops back on the bed - they’re lying on it like broad horizontal stripes, not the right way up at all - out of breath and Niall props her feet up on the bedpost, still swearing under her breath about how people who tickle people don’t get into the buffet in heaven. 

Liam turns her head on the bed and finds the round, pale globe of Niall’s shoulder right there, and it’s not a bad view. They’re a good looking band all round, but Niall’s always had something, and she’s been toning up in the gym for the last year with Harry. 

Then Niall leans over and licks the icing on Liam’s cheek that started the fight clean off, which, just like whispering, means she needs a hand on either side of Liam’s face. Liam puts on a protest that’s more noise than effort and feels Niall plant a kiss on her nose while she’s there, then one on her forehead that’s more a brush of her lips than a lick, and _oh._

It goes straight to her abdomen and before Liam knows where her hands are, she’s got a palm flat on Niall’s back, holding her gently in place, while she kisses her temple. Niall puts their foreheads together, knocking the baseball cap off to the floor and putting a curtain of long blonde waves around their faces. Between the afternoon sun in Niall’s hair and her grin, Liam feels lightheaded and surrounded by impossibly light things all at once, like the sugar-sweet has gone right to her head like a body shot. 

‘You can, you know,’ Niall says, quietly, but not fraught. Curious. ‘We can.’

Liam feels her breath catch in her throat and looks up. It’s still Niall. Just Niall, even, Niall who’s so generous with everything she has to give, and seems to be offering something to Liam. 

Telegraphing every move like she’s dealing with an animal that might shy away, Niall kisses her cheek slowly, tiny flick of tongue to her cheekbone and noisy nuzzle to the corner of her jaw. 

‘You want - this?’ Liam asks. 

‘I’m a bit in love with our whole band, Li, in case you hadn’t noticed,’ Niall says with a laugh in her throat, not like it’s a confession, just another statement of fact, and Liam knows. People worry about Harry tripping over heartbreak like a loose slab in the street, but really, Liam knows it’s Niall who’s already there. It’s partly why it makes it so easy for all of them to love Niall and why they’re all the most protective of her.

Niall slips a knee down to the other side of Liam’s hipbone and the sudden way that there’s someone warm, someone who loves her, all around Liam’s body fills her chest to bursting. 

The radio sounds very, very far away. 

Niall slides her body against Liam’s and it fits, it fits like toes slipping into warm but not hot sand or like sweet tea on a long day, so much so that Liam can’t help rubbing her palms up and down the sides of Niall’s ribcage. But. But. 

‘You’re not going to hurt me, love, when we don’t get married and don’t have a feature in _Hello!_ about our epic love,’ Niall mutters against her ear. ‘Harry had the right idea, but you’re not going to find someone in a club, are you, and you wouldn’t like it much if you did?’ Niall runs the cold tip of her nose down the shell of Liam’s ear. ‘But I like you exactly the right way. _We_ like each other just the right way.’

It’s a very, very good point. Liam loves sex, she really does, but it’s always better with someone she can laugh with, someone who knows her. It’s supposed to be relaxing, sex is, but relaxing means trusting to Liam. And she only trusts, really trusts, four people in the whole world like this, now. 

That besides, for all the band are great among themselves about equality and all that, it doesn’t stop the press being harder on the girls when they dare to admit they aren’t virgins, harder than they are on the boys, who apparently, will be boys. It pisses them _all_ off no end, but the world isn’t finished and shiny, so they deal with it as best they can. It's particularly grating when they make a big deal about Louis's or Harry's sexuality - any of their sexualities, really - and then when Niall goes out with Demi or Selena everything is written off as friends-who-are-girls because God forbid Niall is openly dating a girl.

Liam feels her eyelids flutter shut when Niall uses her position straddling Liam’s lap to start working the circles of a massage into her shoulders. It’s part massage and part hug, with Niall rocking her back and forth very gently, with Niall’s head against hers. Maybe it had been a bad idea to tell Niall she really missed sex the other day. 

Then again, maybe not. 

‘You - we - get to keep some things for ourselves, love,’ Niall murmurs into her hair, and Liam thinks she starts to get it then. Niall isn’t stumbling into this blindly, or looking for them to be a forever thing, because Liam knows somewhere in her gut that they aren’t quite right for that - to be a two, without the others balancing them up. 

Liam doesn’t want to think words like ‘bonding exercise,’ because Harry is constantly suggesting they do paintball, or have an orgy, or paintball and _then_ an orgy for that, and if Harry Styles has two great ideas in a month, Liam might have to take up drinking seriously after all. 

‘What about Demi?’ Liam blurts out, because maybe she is Bruce Banner destined to cock-well, vagina-block herself.

Niall grins at Liam like it’s actually a surprise it took Liam this long to bring up the Demi Thing. Liam pouts. Niall snuggles her closer. ‘We’re not... She doesn’t want a relationship right now and neither do I, if that’s what you’re worried about. This is you and me, Li. I love you and well, you-’

Liam tightens her arms around Niall. ‘I love you too, Nialler.’

They smile at each other and she really gets it now.

Niall gives an awful lot of herself away and Liam realises with a lurch of affection that she’s more than happy to be something Niall takes for herself, even just for a lazy, sunlit afternoon. 

That she wants to give Niall anything she can as much as Niall wants to take care of her. 

Liam feels herself let out a shudder, then she tilts her mouth up to find Niall’s with a smile. Niall tastes like full-sugar coca cola and the cupcakes they haven’t finished, and her hair threads around the hand Liam puts at the back of her head like soft linen.

Everyone was telling her that she needed a rebound, a one night stand, and maybe everyone was right, but there’s no way she could ever think of Niall like that, not really. 

Niall is one of her best mates in the world and laughs when she’s coming down against Liam’s shoulder, mouthing against her neck. Of course, she rolls over and stuffs a cupcake in Liam’s face in retaliation from before and licks off the icing again until Liam laughs, kicking at her. And while Liam knows they’ll probably never do this again, and it’s nice, it’s so nice. It’s nice knowing Niall was with her when Liam crossed _that_ stage of healing and that she’d be there the next morning and the morning after.

*

After, and after a power nap from the gods, Niall kisses Liam with a closed mouth and says, ‘See you at dinner, babe.’ Liam falls asleep before she’s even padded from the room, but Niall knows Liam won’t wake up to be alone: she’ll wake up, shower and meet the band at the restaurant. The way Liam curled around her after coming (again, holla, girl has skills), tension drained and ready for a dreamless, heavy sleep, had settled something in Niall’s stomach, something that had been asking her: are you sure, are you sure, like a heartbeat, with a counterpoint of _can’t lose you, any of you, not one._ She hadn’t lied about being in love with them all, infatuated with them all to one degree or another, and the fact that it’s mutual for all of them? They’re so fucking lucky. 

Because friends don’t let friends fall asleep mouthing _I love you_ to strangers, making liars of their talented tongues when they don’t know any other ways to be intimate other than intimacy, and why be any other way, when it could just so easily be true? Niall never bothers regretting things she doesn’t actually regret, but it’s even better when she knows what she did was right down to her bones. 

Unfortunately, she’s jangling in her skin like Harry’s bracelets as they sit at the table in the tasteful restaurant. Louis crows, ‘Should I tweet? Can I tell the internet she’s late to dinner?’ 

No one answers, because signing off on Louis’s ridiculousness is Liam’s job. So nicely done there, Payner. 

‘I feel like Liam would probably say no to this,’ Zayn puts in, looking at Louis speculatively, and Niall knows how this will go. Zayn will protect Liam til his dying breath, which will take decades, or until Louis can corrupt him to his tweeting purposes, which will take five minutes.

‘Sorry, sorry,’ Liam’s voice calls out, and it’s so hilariously _Liam_ to be sending her voice ahead, to lessen the lateness by seconds, that Niall lets out a breath. She wonders if Harry feels like this the morning after his encounters: he’s the most active of them, but not the way the press thinks. He just sees sex as part of his healthy, active lifestyle, and doesn’t understand why everyone else is so hung up on being ashamed of it. That said, Niall knows - and respects - the way he will fight the powers that be by saying things like ‘we don’t objectify women’ four times in one radio interview without trying to pretty it up, or how he’ll unapologetically glare at even one inappropriate question directed herself or Liam, but he’ll respect someone’s decision not to bring attention to sleeping with him like the binding contract that it is. Just because he doesn’t really get the shame factor doesn’t mean he’ll bring it down on other people’s heads. 

But it’s a responsibility, isn’t it? 

Niall knows she comes across as the youngest, even though she isn’t, _Styles_. Small, blonde, pretty. In awe of the rest of them for the longest time, then just in awe of the moment, the moment that never seems to end.

So it’s not that she’s nervous, or that anything’s changed, or that she’s toying with her napkin out of any discomfort, though she spots Louis’s quick eyes catching the movement. 

Niall’s just never, ever wanted to treat anything with so much _care_ as this little moment between the last time she saw Liam, laid out on a bed with sun-dilated eyes, and now. 

Failure isn’t an option and maybe she repeats that to herself in Obama’s wise tone, because it _does_ make her feel a little better. 

Liam rubs her knuckles along Niall’s bicep as she takes the seat next to her. It’s not a habit they had until this afternoon, when Liam told her how good working out looked on her, but it feels as familiar as any of their habits. It goes straight to her stomach like an electric shock, but less in arousal and more out of warmth: something new, from what they did. Something they’ll keep doing even if what they did didn’t feel like it needed to happen again. 

‘Drink up, Li, we’re gonna get you a shag tonight! Wingman Styles reporting for duty. Too close for missiles!’

Niall laughs, and maybe it’s the bottle of top shelf (is it bottom basement?) prosecco they’ve split as a starter before Liam got there, it did have lovely bubbles. Or it could be Harry’s terrible attempt at a Top Gun reference. Or it could be the way Liam blinks and laughs a beat later, loose and fucking delighted, the kind of laugh they haven’t heard in months, not like that. 

Liam’s hand squeezes Niall’s shoulder furthest from her and Niall lets her eyes close as Liam nuzzles her hair. When she opens them Harry and Zayn are exchanging confused looks.

She can’t help a quick look at Louis. 

His hands are white around the napkin he’s been fidgeting with himself, small hands delicately churning the linen. And Niall saw that coming. Louis is extremely observant when he wants to be. And he’s got this Liam radar that is very different from Zayn’s, Harry’s or even hers. The moment stretches, Niall looking at Louis, Liam’s eyes closed in her hair with a muttered, soft ‘thank you’ against her ear. 

Liam and the others haven’t noticed Louis’s look, but when Liam lifts up from her, Harry and Zayn have finally clicked if their gaping mouths are anything go by. 

Normally Niall is up and off with a quick remark but this isn’t quite normal, even if it doesn’t feel strange. But someone needs to say something, fast, before it all crosses to the very dangerous place they’ve all avoided until now. Niall can tell this by the tension she’s feeling curl around Liam who’s caught on that the lads have caught on and how carefully Louis is looking at them.

‘Well, now, good on you,’ bless Harry Fucking Styles and his ridiculous voice. He nods at them like they’ve just won something.

Liam flushes. Zayn smirks and reaches over and covers Liam’s wrist. Funny, innit, how Liam, maybe more than the rest of them, save possibly Harry, needs that comfort of touch now. And that's all Louis's doing, Niall knows, he retaught Liam to love touch, to seek it out, instead of shying and flinching from it. They've all benefited, really. 

‘So, is this a thing that’s happening now,’ comes from Louis. He’s trying for casual so very hard but Niall is not under the impression that any of them buy it. They call Liam the worrywort but Louis is actually ten times worse. And that would be just if he was only worrying about Liam and Niall, but Niall has the suspicion that he has a stake in this, too. 

‘Not that we wouldn’t be supportive if it was,’ Zayn cuts in, quick to soften the edge Louis hadn’t been able to hide but also reassure to Liam. If there’s one thing that Zayn and Louis clash and agree on the most it’s Liam. Across from her, Niall meets Harry’s eyes. He winks and she feels part of the tension in her ease away. Harry gets it, and if Harry gets it that means he’ll get Louis to get it if he decides to be difficult about it. 

But Niall knows she needs to speak up too, because it was her choice to push at that line with Liam and she doesn’t regret a minute of it. Not when Liam smiled at her like Niall had just given her a piece of herself back. 

‘It was something we did,’ she says, and looks over to Liam. She winks and Liam snorts inelegantly, waggling her brows back.

Another wave of laughter bubbles between them and she can barely hear Harry’s ‘really well done!’ and Liam’s following, ‘ _quite_ well done!’ Niall catches Zayn rolling his eyes, but fondly, like there’s something he’s seeing in Liam - in her exchange with Harry and how she’s smiling at Niall but not _smiling at Niall_ , there is a difference - that Zayn’s missed seeing. Niall thinks she knows exactly how he feels and because she’s looking at Zayn she doesn’t miss how his eyes flash towards-

Niall hates the lick of nerves she feels when she looks towards Louis because she loves Louis, just like she loves Liam and Harry and Zayn. They’re everything she’s ever wanted in mates, in people to spend her life with, and she hates thinking she might have fractured something. Because if Louis cracks at this so will they all, eventually. 

He’s still looking between Niall and Liam like they’ve slightly altered his world but the tension in his face isn’t as heavy as it was. Niall watches as his eyes fall to Liam, still joking and grinning with Harry and Zayn, and how they soften so much Niall aches because she knows she doesn’t look at Liam _like that_ , but she’s starting to think that Louis hasn’t realised it about himself either. Not if that little widening of his eyes is anything to go by.

His eyes flick back to Niall and it’s blue on blue. If Niall let her brown hair out grow out she and Louis would probably look the most alike. Brother and sister.

She smiles and tries to tell him it’s all okay. She and Liam are still the same as ever, except how they share a little something more, but the more won’t be defining them. 

Louis exhales and she wonders if he had actually been holding his breath. He quirks that half smile of his that says _oh Nialler you’ve done it again, magical Nialler_ and she can’t help but beam back at him. His eyes drift back to Liam and Harry like he’s finally got it and a second later Niall giggles.

‘What’s so funny, Ni?’ Harry says. 

She shrugs, ‘No, just... I’m a genius.’ 

‘Niall!’ Liam exclaims, poking her.

‘A sexual genius?’ Harry waggles his brows.

Niall laughs, signalling towards Louis, ‘An everything genius.’

Harry’s eyes open wide and then, ‘So would it be inappropriate for me to ask for high fives now?’

They all fall apart at that, loud hive fives being exchanged, and Niall just really loves her band, especially Liam who’s already rattling off apologies to the staff and getting them out of trouble.

**

She’s not sure when they really started or if they were just always a thing that’s only become sharper lately, but. They’ve been a topic of conversation between her and others recently. 

It’s just everyone calls them dates, but they really aren’t. Not really. It’s just her and Louis doing stuff... together. Yeah, that doesn’t sound better either. Maybe they are dates, just a little bit. She doesn’t mind the label, and she doesn’t mind it’s Louis she shares it with, but like _dating._ Liam’s not sure she’s even ready for that. Not the way people seem to be talking about what she and Louis do.

It’s not like it was with Dan where they went on ‘proper dates’ to ‘proper places’. Which was fine, really, that was her and Dan. 

What she does with Louis is completely different. She doesn’t think it makes her a bad person thinking she likes it better how she and Louis just go out and do things they like, just because. 

They never plan anything. Louis calls her or she calls him and it’s a quick exchange of ‘let’s do something’ and ‘all right, be there in ten’. Or he just turns to her during a photoshoot, grinning sly and eyes twinkling, waggling his ridiculous eyebrows, ‘I saw some Barclay’s bikes out front, shall we?’ And why not. It’s fun to do stuff with Louis. 

Liam always has fun with Louis.

Tonight though they’re just kind of bored, really. They went to dinner at the nondescript Zizzi by one of their flats and now they’re working past their food coma. Why can’t she say no to chocolate cake? Or chocolate anything? Liam’s head is resting on Louis’s tummy which he only complained about for a second before running his fingers through her hair. For some reason they all like doing it more now that it’s shorter. Maybe it’s because it’s fluffier, according to Harry, but Liam doesn’t mind it. Especially when Louis likes scratching gently at the back of her neck where her hair is the shortest and softest. It feels nice. 

‘’m bored,’ Louis murmurs from where he’s slightly above Liam, head resting on the sofa arm. 

Liam bites down on her grin, ‘I’m hurt, Tommo.’

She supposes she deserves the nose pinch this time so she lets it happen as she half-heartedly pokes at Lou’s ribs. He grabs at her hand then starts playing with Liam’s fingers. He spins the ring Zayn bought her around her thumb. 

‘I’m bored, too,’ she says, because she still has that bad habit of not wanting Louis, or anyone really, thinking she’s cross with them. She hardly ever is, anyway, with Louis, even when he probably deserves it. Tilting her head back she catches the flash of his smile. 

‘Wanna do anything?’

‘Always,’ Louis answers, and it’s a pretty accurate statement. Liam’s sure he’s only been still for a half hour because of the food at dinner being so heavy and rich. ‘Anything in mind?’

Everything seems simpler now. They’d been on the road a long time, Liam and her band, and like one of those drawings showing how to do perspective, by the time they got back to London it felt like everything but them had melted away. They’d circled back home at the horizon, the disappearing point. Not like when they started or Dan had left uneven spaces in even her homesickness, or when she’d asked Zayn to cut her hair. 

It’s grown in enough that Lou had dragged her to a ‘proper’ hairdresser for a styling. Zayn had pouted and gone with ‘to learn for next time’ and Liam had giggled through the whole thing, helpfully, because he was _serious_ and sketching the angle of the scissors and the fall of the layers. 

Maybe she should have let him do the tattoo, that first time, he keeps talking about designing her another one. Across her left forearm she can feel Louis’s thumb rubbing over the slightly raised skin.

She sits bolt upright and smacks Louis’s stomach with the flat of her hand. 

He clutches it in his own and turns her to him, and she’s not all the way through hell yet, or she must not always quite look it, because he’s looking for something that he doesn’t find, like a crack in the hull of a ship. 

Liam grins. ‘I know what we’re doing tonight.’ 

‘Keep talking,’ Louis answers with a tentative smile. He hasn’t let go of her hand. 

_Keep going._

*

There are other tattoo parlours in London, but they just tend to gravitate to this one. It looks like an homage to every tattoo parlour on every US TV show that every cop team has gone to for information. It’s got a pool table (she’s getting quite good), the walls don’t have an uninked inch left on them, and Louis stands by her side thumbing his own tattoos like he’s about to be inspected. If he is, he’s in trouble, Liam thinks, because she knows at least one of them was Zayn on a tour bus. 

She almost wishes Zayn were there to sketch what she wants, because she’s crap with words, and with drawing, if she’s honest. _Just tell me the song to sing and I’ll sing it,_ but it usually takes a mediator to help her really create something new. She hated that, once, but now she just adds it to the pile of good - great, never-ending - things about being in a band. 

The artist gets it, though, and helpfully flips open one of the design book for her to browse while Louis laughs through his latest tattoos. They’re little ones: letters from home on his bicep, and must he flex it like that the whole time? She wonders if he’s getting it because she’s there, or whether he wanted it anyway, and either thought warms her, because they’re still both there, Liam leafing through design books and lazily tickling his free palm while the artist inks him. 

There’s been a really lovely amount of laughter in her life today, she thinks. 

Liam gets to a page with road signs - actual road signs, like on clip art or something - and stops to wonder who even does that. Then again, who travels the world with co-dependent idiots for months on end? Each to their own. 

‘Oh really?’ Louis puts in with an arched eyebrow. She shakes her head, then nods to the curve of his elbow where the ‘o’ in OOPS! is visible. _One to talk._

He shrugs the shoulder that isn’t attached to the elbow and smirks, with a shake of his head at the page. _Really, road signs?_

She taps a finger teasingly on ‘changed priorities ahead’ and tickles his palm. He barks a laugh. 

Still. There’s something. 

Then it’s her turn in the chair again, which sounds sinister, and she’s not nervous, except she’s kind of nervous. Louis doesn’t say anything, just sits by her and takes her hand. He didn’t see the words, the first time, and she still remembers his - and the others’ - face when the bandage came off. How they all so carefully touched the still raw skin like it was sacred or something. 

There’s no hiding this one, though. This one isn't delicate. 

The arrows are dark and bold, and they take a while. Longer than OOPS! anyway, and she suddenly wonders if she’s being entirely too sincere with her ink. Then she remembers Harry, and buried under the doodles, there’s _things I can_ and _things I can’t_ for when he’s got his palms up in surrender and they’re empty, and Liam relaxes. 

Louis leans in while the artist finishes the tip of the second arrow. ‘You know we’re going to have to have scraps over who gets which one?’

‘I didn’t expect anything less,’ Liam replies, tightening her grip on his hand, not even pretending she’s getting four arrows pointing in the same direction pointing up at her hand for an obscure and new reason. It’s not exactly a subtle statement. ‘What kind of competition?’

Louis leans in so close she can feel his breath hot on her ear. ‘Don’t know. Haz will want hot oil or mud wrestling.’ He pauses and there’s a flick of his tongue across his lower lip. ‘I was going to ask what I could do to get first dibs.’ 

There’s something curling like heat in her veins at that. Her heart speeds up, and he _sees,_ the bastard. He draws his short nail lightly across her palm and, oh, _fuck._ The needle on her arm, his nail tracing her heart line, mouth on her ear. Why did nobody tell her tattooing could get so pornographic? Is this why Zayn keeps doing it? 

This is the worst date ever.

Oh.

_Fuck._

She really tries not squirm in the chair. 

Louis talks her through each arrow the way the band talked her through the tour, except he’s running fingertips up and down the sensitive skin on the inside of her free wrist, thumb pressing in and circling on the ‘E’ of the ‘everything’ while he talks. Liam hopes he’s not saying marvelous, clever things she’s supposed to tell the others about later, because he could be reading out the phone book for all she hears. There’s the hum of his voice, the hum of the needle and the shivers from his hand, and that’s all she can take in, full of sensation from toes to the top of her head. 

The artist starts the last arrow, the one closest to her wrist, where the skin of her arm is the thinnest and she’s honestly not sure if she gasps because of the bite of the needle or because Louis’s teeth press against her earlobe as he says something. Oh god, what is he saying. She _mmmhmms_ and really hopes she just didn’t agree to some ridiculous thing like skinny dipping in the next hotel’s pool, except oh, that would be... She risks a glance at Louis and sees his smirk turn into something _else_ and okay, okay. So he didn’t ask her to do dirty things in a hotel pool except he’s now reading in her face that had he asked she might not have said no. 

Oh, oh _fuck_.

He swallows and Liam licks her lips and she will never be able to look at these arrows without thinking of Louis’s face right now. 

‘Sure you can have first dibs,’ she says just to say something. She’s belatedly aware that’s not quite the question he asked, but um, it doesn’t look like he’s going to call her out on it. Whew.

He opens his mouth, but the needle bites in there were it’s just a little too much for her and she squeezes her other hand on reflex. Louis smooths his thumb against her pulse point. Liam has the sudden urge to lean over and kiss him like couples do, as comfort of _hi, you’re here_. Like Zayn and Perrie do. Instead she shifts her head closer to where he’s been leaning down close to her and smiles when he brushes her hair out of her face. 

‘It looks good,’ he says, making a show of leaning over her, the bottom of his ribcage against her hip bone and his shoulder blades moving under his thin tshirt, neck stretching. 

Liam grins, ‘Yeah?’

He sits back and nods, ‘Yes, the best.’

She chuckles, ‘Better than yours?’

He rolls his eyes, ‘Never. Better than all of Hazza or Zayn’s combined.’

Liam bites at her bottom lip and really tries not to feel a little proud at how Louis’s eyes flick down like he’s jealous of her teeth. The last arrow is half done and she’s never loved and hated something more. The buzz of the needle suddenly seems like a countdown clock.

*

They make it all the way to the flat which is actually three more streets and two floors than she’d given them. Her arm throbs a little, like the tattoo is echoing the pulse of her blood all that more, making everything fuzzier than it ought be. Louis also has a horribly expressive face and quick fingers and if this pinching her hips thing - going to her tie loop of her trackies and oops, slipping under, the bite of his fingers just following - is going to be a new thing Liam is going to need to come up with some sort of suitable retaliation. 

At her door to the flat, and ha! she’s not so gone that she can’t open a door, Tommo, she figures she’s got one. When the lock clicks open she turns, slipping her left arm around Louis’s neck and bites at the curve of his jaw where it goes all soft by his ear. By the sound he makes and how he's practically spilling them into the flat, her back hitting the wall as an arm secures itself around her waist, well, she’s been successful. 

Louis isn’t that much taller than her - one and a half inches that he’s very protective over, that disappear in any heels Liam wears, not sorry - but it’s enough that her face is tilting up and she’s gasping as he sucks _hard_ on her bottom lip, teeth digging in just enough, like he’s been waiting to do just that since he saw her bite her lip at the tattoo parlour. The fact that that’s probably true has Liam moaning as Louis soothes his tongue over the spot and licks into her mouth. Liam’s hips have a will of their own and press up against Louis’s.

The door clicks shuts behind them just as Liam finds herself hoisted up against the wall. Her legs go around Louis’s hips, and while he might not be able to carry her to the bed - Liam is not a small girl and she’s well aware she’s more muscle than curves, but that’s fine - the wall is perfectly fine for now, and she’s tall and strong enough to help keep them there. So is Louis, to be fair, he’s got these _thighs_. As an athlete Liam is very appreciative of his thighs.

Except maybe not if her knees have anything to say about it, because Louis has dropped to his at her feet. Liam is blinking rapidly, because huh?

Oh.

It’s a hot Autumn in London and Liam is dressed accordingly: loose trackies and a thin tshirt, pretty much the same outfit as Louis is wearing, though hopefully not for long, and who’s to say which wardrobe the clothes even started off in. The only thing she’s wearing that she’s sure she bought is the sports bra. The trackies are loose enough for Louis to push the right leg of them up to press his mouth to the knot of bone at her knee and the soft skin above it in wet, open-mouthed kisses that he starts with tongue and grazes with teeth. Her knees are in very serious dangerous of wobbling. 

‘You could just take them off,’ Liam groans out, threading her hand through his hair. It’s messy and rucked up to the side in his usual wave, but she kind of wants to make it messy because of her. 

He grins up at her through his eyelashes, keeping his eyes on her as he tugs them down at her hips just enough to pinch there. 

She definitely wants to make a mess of him, so she does: for all his looks and teeth, he’s pliant as she drags him back to his feet and pulls him in so there’s no air between her back and the wall, her body and Louis’s. Liam can feel every place their bodies meet with a jolt that keeps going: sharp hipbones against his, chest pressed against him and never have tshirts felt so thin, thighs a hot line against hers, with his knee bending to slide his leg between hers. 

Liam takes his hands and puts them on her sides, then unceremoniously shoves her hands into his hair, thumbing the skin behind his ear, crooking her fingers to drag her short nails across his scalp and licking into his mouth to feel his tongue take the dare. 

Louis is a clever boy: he pushes her trackies and boy cut briefs down while she’s kissing him, using the heel of his ankle to push them the last third of the way off of her shins. She would worry about her all too plain knickers, but. The scrape of the rougher skin of his heel makes Liam swear and hit her head back against the wall, clenching a fist in his hair. The slightly raw skin under the bandage throbs as her muscles tense. Liam loves it. Louis grins and sucks a sharp lovebite below the line of her jaw, threading his own hand through her hair to cushion where her head meets the wall. 

The room is so hot that all Liam feels at the clothes pooling at her ankles is a different kind of heat. 

She’s going to have marks on her neck in the morning, and she’s choosing them like she chose the marks on her arm.

The thought steals the breath from her lungs and something in the gasp has Louis pulling off her neck to look at her with darkened eyes, heavy-lidded and head tilted. 

‘Right then,’ he says, voice rough, tongue flicking out over his lower lip again, and kisses her again, this time closed-mouth and hard. 

He works down her left side like he’s climbing down a tree, hands tracing anywhere he can reach, and hooks a hand at the back of her right knee. Liam swallows hard and gasps when she feels the bare back of her thigh against the skin of his collarbone and the scrape of the tshirt collar as he lifts her knee over his shoulder. Her hands stay in his hair, a question, and they’re only shaking very slightly, which Liam thinks is an achievement, considering the blood rushing in her veins and pounding in her ears. She tries not think of how under clingfilm and white gauze her arrows are pointing right at him. 

Louis lifts one of her hands from his hair, sucks the sensitive skin on the back of her wrist, drawing his tongue across the hollows between the small bones there, then puts it back where he found it with a filthy smile up at her. 

_Oh,_ Liam thinks, and it short circuits something in her brain, because he’s telling her to pull his hair.

Like he’s making sure she completely gets it, Louis pushes her hips back against the wall as if he’s going to hold them there, then turns his hands to pull her hips back to him, mouthing at her hipbone, probably still red from all of his bloody pinching, one hand flat against the thigh below her arse. It occurs to her in a distant way that with his hand like that, he can’t push her back if she pushes forward, and _oh,_ that’s something all right.

Louis sits up on his heels, his spine rolling under his tshirt, and she feels the stretch in her thigh muscles as her knee is pushed higher. Liam can’t watch, but can’t look away either, as Louis’s head dips to expose the back of his neck and his hand and tongue work her open: he doesn’t do things by halves, and if she could think a thought or two in a row, she’d think that going down on her clearly isn’t an exception. 

It’s a good thing Louis let her know about the hair, because Liam doesn’t think she could stop tugging him closer and letting out breaths and sounds as his tongue finds her clit and he crooks a finger just inside her. When she rucks her hips up to get even closer she feels his hand tighten on the back of her thigh, pulling her in. 

When she comes, it’s with a start and a harsh exhale that shivers down her spine, and she thinks, from the sound he makes, that Louis can see her toes curling into the carpet, feel her others curling against his back. Liam’s hand lifts sharply from Louis’s hair and the side of her fist finds the wall with a groan. Louis licks her through it until the aftershocks turn to the sharpest side of sensitive and she tugs his hair to pull him off. As Liam bends forward, he rolls to his feet and presses his mouth all along her collarbone and neck until he’s at her earlobe again, and doesn’t he know that’s how this got started? 

‘Quite finished?’ is a warm mouth on her ear, slow and hot and pleased, and she feels his cock hard against her hip with a wrecked groan. 

Liam takes a shuddering breath then opens her eyes and feels her mouth stretch to a grin. She pushes Louis back by the shoulders until they’re in the bedroom and he’s sitting on the bed, his own grin turning wicked as she drags his tshirt off - his sleeve catches his bandage and he hisses but the grin only sharpens and she thinks he likes it, that’s good to know - then her own and his hands dart to run fingertips along the edge of her sports bra where it meets flushed skin. 

It’s practically it’s own work out, taking the bloody thing off as they laugh against each other’s mouths arms tangling over her head.

His hands are then on her hips and Liam’s bending in for a kiss full of filthy thanks when she leans back, bare thighs against his when he pushes his own trackies down to bunch at the knees. 

‘Not even a little bit,’ Liam hums against his neck, where she’s tracing the outlines of the marks she’s planning to leave, and gets on with that.

*

At some point they clearly ended up right side up on the bed but Liam can’t remember when, a compliment to Louis who has so thoroughly melted her brain, the bastard. She wakes up to the soft pull of skin and Louis’s fingers brushing against the bend of her elbow.

He’s sitting up and Liam frowns up at him. 

‘Ow,’ she mumbles, but doesn’t look away from where he’s oh so carefully pulling at her bandage. The clingfilm and tattoo goop looks gross when he tosses it behind him. 

Louis bends down and bites at her nose. It’s like his normal pinches but somehow more intimate, maybe because he also licks it; she still scrunches her nose. 

‘Sorry, love, but we don’t want an infection do we?’ and she watches as he grabs the little squeeze bottle of Tattoo Maintenance Gel and drops a thick, cool stripe on her arm. His own is still wrapped up and it’s sweet, it really is, that he’s looking after hers first. It’s all very Louis. She grins.

‘Did you have to wake me?’ she grumbles, but mostly for play. 

Louis chuckles, ‘Well, yes. I forgot how light of a sleeper you can be.’

Liam shrugs, ‘Normally not after orgasms, but you know, you’re torturing me.’ Louis laughs, entire face lighting up and Liam really loves that look on him. How open he can get when it’s just them and their band. He bends down again, never stopping the soft massage at her arm, and presses a slow, lazy kiss to her lips. When he pulls back Liam chases him a little. He pinches her hips. She grins and leans up to nip at his jaw. His eyes flash all warm and soft and he tilts his head. 

‘You gonna do that every time I pinch you now?’

Liam wiggles herself up and settles against the headboard, ‘Thinking about it, why?’ she shrugs.

Louis gives her a look that makes her feel all squirmy. ‘I like it.’

‘Good, then. Get used to it.’ She reaches over to pick at the edges of one of the looser bandages on his arm. Maybe they should have been more careful, she wonders. ‘Here, let me.’ And Louis offers up his arm and the goop. Liam takes her time carefully pulling away the gauze and clingfilm and stroking the letters that mean home to Louis. 

It’s surprisingly quiet, for them, but Liam guesses it makes sense. She and Louis are always the ones more careful when taking care of the others, it’s understandable it transfers over to them by themselves.

Maybe that’s why it’s so unexpected. 

‘So, two out of four, not bad, Li,’ and Liam freezes. Louis’s gaze snaps to her and she can tell he knows his delivery fell on the wrong side of teasing. 

‘Seriously, Lou?’ she throws back at him, in her most unimpressed tone, the one he hated back in X Factor. The one she hasn’t used towards the band in ages. She doesn’t even realise she’s already moving up from the bed when Louis pretty much tackles her back down, his thighs closing around her hips and fuck she hates his lower body strength sometimes. She shoves at his chest. 

‘Shit, shit shit shit. I’m sorry, Li, I’m so fucking sorry, I didn’t- I mean, I wanted to talk about it because- but, l didn’t- I didn’t mean it _like that_.’ Thing is Liam knows that, her brain knows that, and since it’s happened her afternoon with Niall hasn’t even rippled the waters of the band. Or she hadn’t thought, but now Louis’s words are playing over and over in her head and she’s shoving at him again. 

His grip actually loosens but Liam doesn’t make a move to get out of bed and she’s just staring at Louis’s face, feeling her eyes too hot when he dips down and kisses her like she’s water and he’s dying for just a taste of her. She tilts her head bad to pull away, but Louis only gentles the kiss. _I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry._

She pushes at him against, softer, and this time he goes. She turns her head.

‘Li, look at me,’ he says, pulling away, sitting by her side, and she doesn’t want to, because she’s never questioned Louis and his feelings for her until this moment and it’s the worst feeling ever. Dan wishes, basically. 

She hates that she thinks that because she wants to have loved everyone just exactly as they deserve, but this with Louis feels heavier and lighter than anything has ever felt all at once: as light as the tattoo needle, but as difficult to undo, if she wanted. If he wanted. 

Liam doesn’t want him to want that. 

She looks at him. His thumbs brush the skin under her eyes. 

He did that once before, she remembers.

‘I didn’t mean it like that. I promise you,’ and that’s important because Louis doesn’t like to make promises he can’t keep, ‘I just, it was joke. Horrible joke, like the carrots except much less funnier because I hurt your feelings and made you think that you did something wrong.’

‘I didn’t,’ she mumbles, sitting up, facing him. She wants equal ground or something.

Louis nods frantically, like he can’t agree fast enough, ‘You didn’t, at all.’

‘Niall and me-’

‘Are two of my favourite people in the world and incredibly fit birds who should kiss whenever they want,’ he says, and that’s not at all what Liam had been going to say, but it’s not horribly off the mark. 

She shakes her head, ‘I don’t think it’s going to happen again.’

‘Oh?’ His tone is so very careful. Liam feels the balance settle back between them. Because sometimes Louis looks to her to make sure they’re not fumbling, and this might be one of those times. 

She shrugs, ‘I love Niall, but that was something else and we both knew that. This is. Yeah.’

‘Special,’ he murmurs, soft, and yes, Louis did understand. Part of Liam sags back against the bed in relief. ‘Yeah, special,’ she says. Her eyes drift to his tattoo, though, the new one and she runs a fingernail too close to the edge. This is special too, she thinks, different, but no less special. Looking from his tattoos to hers some scary words flutters in Liam’s mind. 

More permanent. 

Looking up Louis, her breath catches, because she’s not sure how to explain this to him, and god the look he’s giving her should be illegal. 

‘Lou.’

‘This is special too.’

She nods, ‘It is.’

‘Why?’ 

And the word catches in her throat. ‘I love you.’ 

Louis sags against her shoulder, forehead against her skin. She hadn’t realised it was just the uncertainty holding him up. ‘I know.’ 

They say ‘I love you’ easy as hello is the thing, and beyond them, Liam’s had her fill of ‘I love you too’ like a magazine article proclaims it. 

The difference between Louis’s soft reply and their usual use is the miles between the unthought touches and the very deliberate ones. Neither is less special but the meanings change so much.

Liam thinks that maybe Louis is the most observant of them all, but Liam’s in a better position to judge when they’re touching because they’re near to each other or when they’re touching for the very air they breathe and sing with, because Louis touches like Harry smiles - as often as possible - and Liam’s the one who had to learn it all from scratch. 

‘I love you,’ Louis says against her shoulder, and his breath tickles. His knuckle brush against her ribs as she breathes.

‘I know,’ Liam says, slowly, deliberately, putting her arms around his shoulders and pulling him in to smooth out the chapped edges of his lips with her tongue. 

Sometimes its the words and the touch that accompanies them that make all the difference in the world.

When he pulls back, he’s taking his time like he doesn’t want to, licking and sucking and biting like it’s all he wants her to remember his mouth did instead of almost fucking this up. Liam lets him because she understands that. If everything with Niall had gone all rotten Liam would have felt horrible because the last thing in the world she’d ever want to do was hurt her friend, her band. 

Louis sits back up and gives her a goofy smile, ‘Let me try that again.’

Liam laughs, shaking her head, ‘Lou, you don’t-’

He presses his fingers to her mouth so softly Liam falls silent. ‘Let me?’ Liam nods. 

He takes a deep breath and grins, ‘Lee-yum PAYNE, you absolute seductress, who would have thought, _really_? Shall I call Niall and tell her you’ve also spun into your womanly web!’ 

Liam wants to die, from laughter mostly, but also why did she have to fall for the _most_ ridiculous person in the world. She shoves at his face, ‘Ugh, I actually hate you, you know that right?’

He grins, smushing her cheeks, kissing her puckered mouth, because he is five and the fact they’re still naked in bed should not make it hot, except. Ugh. _Louis_. It’s the naked thing that is to blame for the next words out of her mouth.

‘Anyway, Niall knows.’ She pulls her pillow to her chest and curls around it, sticking her tongue out at him.

Louis’s brows do a funny thing. ‘Oh?’

Oh, right. Louis wasn’t supposed to know about that actually. Not that, well, he’s clearly on board with the whole shagging thing, but there was other stuff. Possibly an entire conversation with Niall about their ‘not-dates’ which okay, fine, were actually dates. 

Liam bites at the raw skin around her thumbnail. It’s a bad habit she still has quite broken, especially when nervous, ‘Well, like, I’ve been having thoughts-’

‘Thoughts?’ Louis sounds too smug for his own good. She throws her pillow into his face. Grabs another. Louis mirrors her pose, propped up on one elbow with a pillow at their chests, just staring for a few seconds before Liam continues.

‘ _Thoughts_ about stuff, like our going out and stuff and well, I didn’t want Niall to think I didn’t care about what happened...’ It’s not fair at all how Louis keeps looking at her, face utterly open and loving how ridiculous Liam can be, and she doesn’t feel proud of this, but. It’s really nice under the duvet. ‘Shut up.’

‘Liam,’ says, his voice all high and excited like she just gave him a present and follows her under the duvet. His hands finds her hip and he doesn’t pinch but he presses his fingers in, turning them to press their hips together. He drops soft kisses to her cheek and nose. ‘Stop, I find it lovely you talked to Niall about shagging me. Of course you would.’

She kicks him, ‘ _Thinking_ about shagging you.’

Louis smirks, tilting his chin at her, because fine, fine, they’re naked under a duvet. Still, she pouts, ‘We’re girls, we talk about this stuff! It’s not like you lads don’t either. I see the Significant Looks.’

Louis crows with laughter that somehow mostly gets pressed against Liam’s neck and oh, that’s nice. Louis really does have a very nice mouth. He rolls them over so Liam is sprawled over his chest and she props herself up on her forearm-- oh, ouch, bad idea. She props herself up on her _other_ completely healed forearm.

He brushes her hair out of her face. ‘You know, this is just might be the most brilliant moment of my life.’ Waggling his eyebrows for full effect, he pinches her nose. 

She scrunches up her face and rolls her eyes, ‘Ugh. Please leave, I am done with you. Shoo.’ The fact she wraps one leg tightly around his even as she waves her fingers at his nose means nothing at all. 

Louis smiles at her, arm falling to her back, fingers dragging lazily up and down her spine and leans forward. He kisses her forehead, her temple, her cheek. Liam hums and nips at his chin. 

‘Nope, never,’ he murmurs against her skin. His finger dip down and across her back, pinching the side of her hip. Liam laughs, shuffles up and bites at his jaw. Her eyes flutter close as she settle against him, face tucked into the crook of his neck. 

‘Fine, if you insist. Now, let me sleep.’

Louis mumbles something soft and sweet and the feel of his fingers at the nape of her neck is the last sensation she remembers.

**Author's Note:**

> For some reason _somehow_ 60% of the time (so far!) we end fics with them snuggling in bed, it's a hard knock life.


End file.
